T.L. Morrisey

Friday, February 6, 2009

Notes on The Yoni Rocks (1995)

The Yoni Rocks, 1995


Ed Varney’s cover art for The Yoni Rocks (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1995) is an image of the Venus of Willendorf, a small sculpture of a round shaped woman with big breasts and braided hair that is approximately 25,000 years old; this artifact from our prehistoric past has become famous since it was discovered in Austria early in the 20th Century. The quotation at the beginning of The Yoni Rocks, taken from H.I. Austen’s fascinating book, The Heart of the Goddess, will better help to define the meaning of Yoni: “In Sanskrit, Yoni means ‘womb, vulva, place of birth source, origin, abode, home, nest; family, race, caste.’ It derives from a root word which means ‘to join together.’... For how can we love life if we do not love the yoni, the doorway through which all life passes?”

The Yoni Rocks has two sections, “The Yoni Rocks” and “The Heart of the Goddess.” These poems are concerned with the anima, the feminine part of the male psyche. The whole book is a hymn to the feminine, to the Yoni, to the unifying aspect of life. The title comes from a photograph in which some rock formations became a natural visual representation of the Yoni, so there was also the juxtaposition of something hard and ancient, rock, with something living, giving birth to life, and sexuality, the Yoni.

The Yoni Rocks begins with the funeral of one of my aunts, and then moves to memories of my paternal grandmother and her home, and the many things “home” represents: the feminine, nurturing, comfort, and so on. This is the divine feminine, but the feminine can also be dark, constrictive, and destructive; just read some poets’ work on their mothers. There is also the river, and the metaphorical qualities of rivers, that the same river cannot be stepped into twice, and so on. The second section of the book deals almost exclusively with romantic and sexual love, the meeting and relationship of the two sexes. Romantic love is, indeed, one of the most profound experiences that humans can have, whether it is ultimately positive or negative, for we abnegate our ego when it happens.

Another poem in The Yoni Rocks is about my paternal grandmother who will always have a special place in my heart and psyche. I often visit my grandmother’s home—on Girouard Avenue in Montreal, where she lived for forty years—in dreams or drive passed on my way to work. When I was a child my family lived for two years at Grandmother’s Girouard Avenue flat because my father was not well. Later, I had many happy days when I would visit my grandmother and her two old sisters, my great aunts Essie and Edna. Her home is the psychic center of my imagination and she, herself, is someone I loved dearly. For me, Girouard Avenue is the home of the Grand Mother, a place of ancestors, love and kindness, and the beginning of my journey in life.

As well, and of enormous importance in my life, has been my relationship with CZ who returned me to life, who animated me, after years of not being fully alive. The Yoni Rocks is dedicated to “the three important women in my life: my grandmother, my mother, and my wife.” Whether for good or otherwise, knowing these three women has made my life the journey that it has been and still is. Knowing CZ, my wife, is something that doesn’t need to be discussed here but is celebrated in the following poem, also in The Yoni Rocks:

Reincarnation

1.

We meet again, again flesh
and blood, again bone, tendon
and memory. Events of old lives,
clothes divested as I divested
the past in meeting you,
in meeting you again
and again and again
into infinity.

Forty years of waiting for you,
a dark delirium of the soul;
we met apparently for the first time
but home is where we are together
in this room, this house,
the two square feet we occupy
in a single embrace. The embrace
of memory, bred in muscle, eating
or favouring one side in sleep,
falling asleep in your arms.
The arms of many births,
deaths, incarnations of
gods and goddesses,
Bardic voices, Druid's potion.
Listen, we share the sounds and sights
of a summer's evening, fireflies
across a field seeming
distant but as close as
a hand before your eyes,
breath on the back of your neck,
or is it the darkened field
and firefly lights
repeating their journey
between this life and that?

With you I have
returned home, not a place
walls enclosing silence,
but soul meeting soul
in the ancient movement of time.
I lie asleep on the floor
ear pressed to the darkness
and hear the hum of earth,
the generations of families, priests,
and existence of all living things
like listening, ear to a pregnant
woman's belly, baby's rapid
heart beat; shadows fall hundreds
of feet, listen into the soul
of man preparing for its journey
of final sleep, we came
from here and return, forgetful
of our origins, or of the
father and mother who created us.



Here is the title poem of The Yoni Rocks:

The Yoni Rocks

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,
who would keep us from
hearing Mother's voice?
Who would deny us death,
the rocks that are tombstones:
father's grave lies bare,
a rectangle of grass where
soil separates us; it is more
than soil, but time,
sorrow, and grief.
The men I never knew, Father,
stepfather, my father's father,
the others distant.
So now I return to mother,
returning home, the hidden dream
of home. It is from the mother
that we come, to the earth
that we return. Cleft-divided,
rocks in the hot sunlight
by the ocean, where the iguana
are motionless.
I am drawn to her presence, to
a hymn to woman,
birth, death, the goddess
coming from the earth
and moon, held captive
in moonlight, a perfect
roundness of completion.
She is my seed and bone, my
entrance into life; age four
I lay between my parents,
Father asleep, and Mother,
smiling, said "kiss your
father." Later I slept
with Grandmother and Aunt Mable
at their country home,
lay between them, my head
at their feet making room
for three in one bed. We are three,
a trinity of man, woman,
and child.

Vulva shaped rocks,
the Yoni Rocks, shells,
clams moving on the river's
sandy floor leaving
a trail twisting, straight,
or circular in the sand;
the sun entering the sky
from beneath trees
on the horizon. Mother
is the most beautiful
woman I remember thinking,
long brunette hair, as I lay
in a pram on Girouard Avenue
just a hundred feet
from Grandmothers's flat,
living there when Father
was ill. Mother
was the most beautiful woman
to the child who lay
staring at her as though
only we existed, no other existed
in that enclosure of mother, father
and child. So now I seek to lie
beside you, fear losing you,
as I have been left before.
Now the Yoni Rocks
are a doorway
to the inner life,
as before conception
and birth, before emerging into life
in blood and salt and air;
always fearing the return,
dissolution into nothingness
and fear.


2.

Our ship did not break like waves
on these rocks, rocks that gave us
life; these rocks were stars,
meteors fallen in the night
waiting to cool from their
entry to our world, we saw
them lie almost invisible
half buried in sand and water
cooling in the summer night.
White caps are an old
woman's white hair, twisted
and tied into a bun, faces
seen in clouds when a child,
a horse pulling a milk wagon
on Oxford Avenue in 1957,
Archibald Lampman's:
Tonight the very horses springing by
Toss gold from whitened nostrils,
moved by these lines age sixteen.
Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,
who would deny us poetry, the intimate
square feet we inhabit,
a rectangle of grass, a triangle
of birth, the brown mouse
and codfish, separation
and reunion, sky and earth,
northern lights in July when sailing
at 2 a.m., fireflies on a June evening
when out for a walk with you?
We return to ourselves, to the
woman a man is always beside, or
the man the woman is beside.
Who would deny us hearing Mother's
voice, your touch, or the silent
presence of Grandmother
always with me, always close
with her white hair, cotton
print dress and black shoes,
not a farewell
but this presence ending grief.

(Stephen Morrissey, The Yoni Rocks, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1995; ISBN 0-921852-07-X; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Mystic Beast (1997), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)

1 comment:

Devin said...

Beautiful Stephen-I love the two poems-well Reincarnation obviously and Yoni Rocks-there was so much in that poem that my heart felt-and the last line really got to me-thanks again and best to you!!